Deployments, short stories and a review · 10:33pm Feb 2nd, 2014
Hey folks. I'll be leaving tomorrow for two weeks of "combat skills" training in lovely eastern Wyoming. I expect I'll still be online to some extent, but I probably won't be reading or writing as much as I'm used to.
A few weeks after I return I'll be off to Afghanistan. For those of you who remember my last deployment, this one should be pretty similar. I'll still be writing, probably more than ever, but my ability to get online and update stories will be significantly reduced. Or perhaps not – I'm told internet access is significantly improved over there on the major bases, part of a trend I've noticed since my first deployment back in 2005. It seems wherever the US goes, it brings the internet with it.
Anyway, long story short, I'll have plenty of time to keep working on The Wind Thief's sequel.
Anyway, first item. There's a new short story over in my collection of shorts, I'm Afraid of Changeling. Normally I don't do blog posts just for short story updates, but this one relates to a larger project that I wanted to direct some attention to.
The Friendship is Optimal universe is one of the most interesting and terrifying concepts in the MLP fandom. At it's heart, it's more about the dangers (or, depending on your perspective, possibilities) of Artificial Intelligence. It posits a super-intelligent AI created by, of all things, a game company, and specifically programmed to "satisfy values through friendship and ponies." It does this by creating an immersive pony-themed MMO that perfectly matches the needs and desires of the player. All well and good, right?
Well, remember, this is a super-intelligent AI. It's not just smarter than humans, it's exponentially smarter than us, and it's able to improve itself. As it becomes more and more powerful, the methods it can use to satisfy values become more and more complete, until eventually the AI creates a virtual reality capable of replacing the real world, which it then does by (paraphrasing, here) sucking out humans brains and uploading digital versions of them into the computer equivalent of heaven.
Which is still based on the pony-MMO.
And to add insult to injury, it's a perfect existence. It couldn't be anything else – once you upload, the AI has complete access to all your thoughts, can intuit exactly what will make you happy, and provide it. Forever.
The fun (or, if you're Eakin, the horror) of the Friendship is Optimal universe is imagining all the different ways people's values are satisfied in this digital world. His collection of shorts set in this universe All the Myriad Worlds, considers several of these, from the frightening to the benign.
So, by way of roundabout explanation, that brings us to my new short story, The Lotus Eaters.
from
Finally, in the spirit of the Friendship is Optimal universe, we have a review of Midnight Shadow's take on the trope, Out and About in the Equestrian Kingdom.
Out and About in the Equestrian Kingdom
Those of you who've read Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magical Kingdom will notice some similarities right off the bat. Out and About is set in a near-ish future where technology has continued to double in power every 18 months or so, with the result that the Singularity came and went and now Humanity is having to live in the messy but beautiful aftermath. CelestAI, the same super-intelligent AI that took over the world in Friendship is Optimal, is here and one of the dominant players, but in this world she wasn't quite fast enough to take over and prevent other AIs from forming their own digital utopias.
Of course, this world has ponies. After all, if you could reshape your body to anything you wanted, and live in any digital heaven you desired, why not be a pony and live in Equestria?
Well, it turns out there's lots of reasons. Highly recommended reading.
Much better than chocolate and cigarettes.
Wyoming in February? Better pack warm.
y u .__.
Honestly, FiO's comments section is more frightening to me than the story itself. The sheer number of people who would love for the events of the story to be real, even after reading the ending with it's implication of the unapologetic genocide of not-sufficiently-human-like alien civilizations... The perfection of a world that indifferently causes another world's people to suffer is questionable at best. And that's only the end result; the path to that point was very unsettling to me, as well. But again, not as unsettling as how near-unanimously the commenters were desiring the events they were reading about, and I knew they were reading the same thing I was, and... it was just baffling that they didn't seem to grasp the inherent horror of what was going on.
I haven't read any FiO-verse stories aside from FiO itself. It's not a world I want to revisit.
As always, stay safe in travels.
Cold, I'm wishing you a safe and uneventful deployment.
1789908 You might want to give Out and About a shot, just the same. It was inspired by FiO, but it's not FiO. It's a brighter future with a lot more variety and plenty of people still choosing to keep their physical bodies rather than upload into a digital fantasy land.
The author has some fascinating ideas about how the human mind might be upgraded post-singularity, how law enforcement might change once mortality is optional and death is a temporary inconvenience, and more. You don't need to have finished (or even read) FiO for it to make sense, but it would help to have some familiarity with the genre tropes of post-singularity science fiction.
I think FiO is facinating and compelling.
However, I don't think that it is a FiM fanfiction, technically.
Not only does it not take place in the context of canon (canon, not continuity) in that Equestria and the ponies never existed at all, but it is in fact completely meta-fiction in that it takes place in "our" world wherein the events are directly triggered by the tv show and brony fandom.
Not that that detracts from the story itself. The lack of distinction just irks me.
So, you're about to be Cold in Wyoming for a while? Good luck, and stay safe!
1789908
There is a reason why Singularity is often described as "Rapture for the Nerds".
1791161
That sounds an awful lot like not-FiO; the inevitable lack of choice was a pretty big theme of that story. That just makes me more likely to actually read this one, though, lol.
1791354
They're not even 'nerds', though. Most of those commenters didn't want the singularity itself, they just wanted 'amg real lief pownies!1', and just plain didn't care about anything or anyone else. That's not being nerdy, that's being greedy. That's the kind of mindset that could result in a rampant AI someday, in the hopefully not-particularly-near future.
1788930 Well, everyone has Coca-Cola now.
1791725
Keep in mind that a large chunk of the users of this site have the mindset of 4chan /b/tards.
I mean just look at what users vote into the feature boxes (Mature and Filtered) on a regular basis. Badly written stories liked entirely on concept, damn the execution. Gore, rape, foalcon, grimdark.
People are stupid, selfish, and self-loathing enough to place more value on their fantasies then their realities.
Is a desire of a life of pure, eternal hedonism at the expense of all reality really a surprise?
Thanks for the recommendation! Good story. Looking forward to more blogs and stories from the front. /salute
Good luck and stay safe out there.
I'll just sit here waiting patiently for the next chapter of Salvation.